


heart black and body blue

by nevermordor



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Ableist Language, Explicit Language, M/M, Post-Movie, Rough Sex, Slurs, canonical awfulness, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-31
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-18 06:38:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4695899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermordor/pseuds/nevermordor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being with Fletcher means that Andrew loses: His grip. His pride. Himself. He's starting to wonder if he doesn't mind it so much, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heart black and body blue

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to post this so much sooner than I did, but alas, work has been awful. This story is too, but at least it's a good kind of awful, so it works for me all right.
> 
> Title credits go to The Cardigans and their song, "My Favorite Game."

Every time they fuck, it feels a little like losing.

Not like losing in the sense of a fight: Andrew knows that feeling all too well—has lost more screaming matches than he can count, his voice cracking and giving out; has lost as they’ve grappled and punched and spit and bitten, until his body finally goes limp in Fletcher’s steel grip.

It’s another kind of losing: pieces of himself that he never wanted to give away, that are taken from him. Losing, like his grip, as he struggles to cling to the person he thinks he used to be.

Losing like—

Fletcher’s inside him. His hands are everywhere: between Andrew’s legs and palming across Andrew’s stomach, his nails digging into his skin. His hips rock forward in hard, steady thrusts and Andrew tries to give back as good as he gets—he doesn’t have much leverage like this, when he’s straddling Fletcher’s thighs, when he’s being held and spread open and _fucked._

Teeth sink into the nape of his neck and Andrew whimpers. There’s laughter and hot breath in his ear.

“Christ, you’re a needy little bastard.”

“Harder,” Andrew moans.

Fletcher’s arm wraps around Andrew’s waist, pulling him closer; a hand grabs his dick, pumping him roughly. “Slut,” he hisses. Andrew turns his head to the side and makes Fletcher kiss him—it’s all teeth and tongue, not so much a kiss as it is an assault, and Andrew takes it all, trembling, his face flushed.

It hurts but it feels all right.

Fletcher rolls his hips and Andrew presses backwards, chasing that feeling of heat and shame. The hand around his erection tugs and he comes with a low grunt, his toes curling, everything in him collapsing inward with need. He spreads his legs wider, lets himself shake, lets his brain go blank for a few merciful seconds.

Breathless laughter. Fletcher wipes his sticky palm off on Andrew’s stomach.

“No stamina,” he sneers and Andrew’s retort is silenced as Fletcher’s hips snap forward again. Instead he closes his eyes, lets his head fall back on Fletcher’s shoulder, lets Fletcher drag him closer. He can feel the shadow of bruises along his hips and his muscles scream and the teeth at his neck nearly break skin. Everything _hurts_ and Andrew’s whole body aches and rocks in time with Fletcher in a rush of sick, sweet bliss.

Fletcher’s panting in his ear; his sweat drips along the back of Andrew’s neck. The hands leave his hips and settle on his shoulders, pushing hard—Andrew spills off Fletcher’s lap, landing sprawled in the cluster of rumpled bed sheets. He tries to get up and Fletcher shoves him back down again.

“Stay still,” Fletcher mutters and Andrew does and then there’s a grunt, a sigh of pleasure. Wet heat stripes Andrew’s lower back.

The seconds crawl by. Fletcher holds him in place and Andrew buries his face in the sheets and forces his breathing to even out. He doesn’t move; he doesn’t make a sound. He waits as the sweat dries on his forehead and the cum dries on his back.

Another quiet laugh.

“You look good like that,” Fletcher remarks, and Andrew can hear the smirk in his voice. "Go clean yourself up." A burst of pain, as Fletcher smacks him lightly across the ass. Andrew’s face burns.

If he were different—if he wasn’t so intense, if he wasn’t so cold, if he weren't incapable of being loved—he wouldn’t be here. He knows that. He’d be in bed with somebody else, a girl, or another guy, and they wouldn’t be _fucking_ , they would be making love; they’d hold each other afterwards, and fall asleep in each other’s arms. He could be with someone who genuinely cared and only wanted him to be happy. He really could, and the idea of it sends a shiver of a revulsion racing through him.

He gets up and limps his way toward the bathroom. He doesn’t bother to look back over his shoulder.

 

Losing like—

He knows where everything is in Fletcher’s apartment. He only realizes this as he’s pawing through the medicine cabinet for the ibuprofen, his head pounding and the muscles in his back throbbing, and it catches him off guard. In a way, he supposes, it's completely normal—it's been an entire year since Carnegie Hall. A year since they started seeing each other like this.

A year. Together. He hadn't been keeping track until just now, and Andrew feels his heart sink into his stomach. He closes the door to the cabinet without finding the ibuprofen, and instead turns on the shower, as hot as it will go.

Steam rises, blocking out his reflection in the mirror: the dark circles under his eyes; his shaggy hair, in desperate need of a cut; the fading bruise on his left cheek from when he showed up drunk at Fletcher's after playing this small show at a bar last weekend—he cracked his head on the door frame as Fletcher hauled him inside. It’s still his face and he recognizes bits and pieces of it from time to time: the scattering of scars, or eyes that are just like his mom’s, at least according to his dad. These days, though, it’s mostly a stranger who peers back at him.

The glass fogs over completely, leaving only an outline of him behind.

He should end this. He shouldn’t keep coming back to Fletcher’s place every other night, waiting, huddled on the front stoop, until Fletcher lets him in. He knows. His father has said as much, on the rare occasion when Andrew’s hectic schedule makes time for them to grab coffee, for him to visit on a weekend: “Andy, you don’t need that…that _man_ anymore. You never have to see him again if you don’t want to.”

Carnegie Hall was supposed to mean freedom. It was supposed to be a new beginning. It was supposed to his one shot at slipping out from under Fletcher’s thumb, and it almost was, until the end of the night, when Fletcher pulled him away from the crowds, the admiring musicians, the offered business cards, pulled him back behind the stage and pressed him up against the wall and kissed him, until Andrew couldn’t breathe, until he started to cry, and in the moment it didn't feel so bad, that sense of pressure, of being utterly trapped.

He’s just stepped into the shower when the curtain pulls back and Fletcher joins him. Water runs into his eyes and Andrew presses himself against the far wall to make space.

“I’ll be out in a second,” he says.

Fletcher rolls his eyes. “Turn around.”

Andrew obeys. Fletcher’s touch is alarmingly gentle. Soap slips over Andrew’s shoulders, runs down over his back. Thumbs press into the knots between his shoulder blades and Andrew can’t hold back a sigh of relief.

“You—you don’t have to,” he says weakly.

He’s answered with a kiss along the crook of his neck. “I _know_ that, you fucking retard,” Fletcher murmurs.

Andrew lets his eyes close, lets himself lean into Fletcher's solid warmth, lets him keep kissing and biting his neck, leaving a trail of hickeys for Andrew to try and cover up the morning after.

 

Losing like—

Fletcher wants him to stay. He doesn’t say so, but after their shower, he pushes Andrew back toward the bed. The sheets have been changed. Andrew slips under the cool covers without argument, watching warily as Fletcher turns the bedside lamp to its lowest setting and slides into bed himself.

This is not according to pattern. By this point in the evening, he’s supposed on the train, heading back toward his place in Brooklyn, back to a mostly empty apartment where he’ll lie awake all night and tell himself that he should be happy because his dreams are finally coming true.

This is not the pattern—which of course is all a part of Fletcher’s regular pattern. To confuse, to deceive; he force feeds Andrew guidance and advice, shoves him endlessly in one direction, only to turn around, to rip the rug out from under him, to sit back and watch patiently as Andrew stumbles to keep his balance.

An index finger trails along his cheek, startling Andrew from his thoughts. Fletcher is studying him, his face half-hidden in shadow. “You know, you never told me how you got these,” he says. Andrew blinks. Fletcher scrapes his nail lightly, pointedly, across Andrew’s skin. “Your scars.”

Nobody has ever asked him. Not even Nicole. The day after he got out of the hospital, he’d been wracked with panic about going back to high school. His dad sat him down on the couch and looked him dead in the eye. “Don’t be worried,” he said. “No one will say anything. No one will ask.” It was one of only two times in his life his dad was ever brutally honest with him. He’d been right, too. Nobody said a word. Their eyes went past the scars, went past him, and nobody asked what had happened or if he was even okay and after a while, Andrew stopped waiting for them to.

“Um, I was in a car accident.” Fletcher traces his finger over the jut of Andrew’s chin, along the thin, jagged scar, when he was first thrown from the car, his face dragging across the concrete. He still remembers the pain, remembers the sensation of his own skin being peeled away.

“You were driving?”

“A frie—I mean…” He struggles for the right word. “A guy I knew. In high school. We were hanging out and we were drunk but he said he could drive. But we—he—fucked up. So.” Fletcher’s hand cups the side of his face, his thumb brushing across Andrew’s cheekbone, along the shell of his ear. Andrew wonders what would happen, if he shoved Fletcher's hand away, got out of bed, got his things, and ran and never looked back. A lump swells in his throat. “The other guy walked away without a scratch on him. I was in the hospital for two weeks. My dad was the only one who came to make sure I was okay.”

They’re both silent. Andrew’s thoughts jumble together, they get stuck in his brain in a clutter of anger and exhaustion. He wonders if Fletcher is surprised, if he’s amused, if—had they known each other then—Fletcher would have come to see him in the hospital and he both does and doesn’t want to know the answer to that last question.

And even as he wonders, he can feel the story changing, the same way that drumming did, the same way that everything about him, bit by bit, has stopped being his and become _theirs_. His scars are just another piece that he's handed over; another part of himself lost. The longer he stays with Fletcher, the more will slip through his fingers. 

If he stays, some day there will be nothing left of him.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he says.

Fletcher shrugs. “Fine. We won't talk.” He shifts a little closer but Andrew pulls away, moves to the far side of the bed, and turns over.

“Goodnight,” he says flatly.

He expects Fletcher to grab him, to turn him back over again. Instead, the bedside lamp goes off. The room is plunged into darkness. A memory crawls to the surface, from when Andrew was at Schaffer: a recurring nightmare about Fletcher strangling him in his sleep, and how every time Andrew would wake up, covered in sweat and struggling to breathe.

An arm curls around his waist, pinning him.

“Goodnight, Neiman,” Fletcher says quietly.

Andrew doesn’t say anything at all. He waits, his chest rising and falling in time with Fletcher’s and they lie there together, awake in the dark.

 

Losing:

His grip. His pride. Himself.

He’s starting to wonder if he doesn’t mind it so much, though; if he could get used to the near-permanent feeling of emptiness in his chest, the one that makes him feel a bit like he's falling.

**Author's Note:**

> Mini disclaimer: the story behind Andrew's scars was actually inspired by Miles Teller and an interview he had with Esquire about a car crash he survived back in college. I had actually wanted to write something about Andrew's scars for a while, and then I was flipping through a copy of the magazine the other day, so it ended up being perfect timing. It's definitely an interesting interview and worth checking out.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it. As always, I'm happy to hear feedback. Thanks for reading!


End file.
